Just so everyone knows the ONLY power over city hall the city councilors have is with the city manager. To hire and fire. We did this poll before, lets see how he rates now. If you have been following the latest problems with the Comp Plan and UGB you might have a different take on our hired official.
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I cannot vote because I don’t think we need a city manager. The only reason we have one now is because the mayor and city council are lazy and don’t want to run the city they were elected to manage.
John Atkins took the blame at the CPO meeting for not getting the city SDC’s more in line with reality. Ok John, I challenge you to get them fixed, ALL OF THEM, within the next 2 months. You have taken the blame, so show the community that you can get something done. This will help the development of the community all the way around. If that is just too hard, hand in your resignation.
I read a hilarious letter from a Molalla city resident who works for a builder. This letter ranted that community groups and individuals who oppose the Urban Reserves are the reason that Molalla planning is literally bankrupt.
I bet that person’s employer – a builder – and builders like him – were laughing all the way to the bank when they came to Molalla and stuffed it with homes without being required to pay fair System Development Charges, as they would have had to do in any other well-run city. Those builders made quick, inflated profits and left the poor citizens of Molalla without SDC funds to maintain quality of life elements like sidewalks, roads, parks, and sewer/water systems.
One look at the lines of ZEROS in the past Molalla budgets where SDC funds should have been built up over the years tells the whole sad story.
The letter writer makes this very funny statement:
“The Planning department in Molalla may not be the best in the State but with the constant criticism … how can an individual be allowed to learn and grow. Give them a chance, once again, just because it is not your way does not mean it is not correct or beneficial to the citizens.”
To answer this citizen – Urban Planning is a complex, highly technical profession that requires an advanced college degree and a national planning test to become a certified Urban Planner.
To state “the Planning department in Molalla may not be the best in the State… how can an individual be allowed to learn and grow” is a TOTAL JOKE. No sane city allows an employee to try to LEARN URBAN PLANNING VIA HIT – OR IN MOLALLA’S CASE MISS – ON THE JOB TRAINING!
No one lets people untrained in medicine pretend to be surgeons so they can kill hundreds of people while they “learn and grow”. No good city manager would allow an untrained, unprofessional to kill the future of a city while they “learn and grow” on the job!
Competent cities don’t pay in excess of $60,000 a year in public monies to an uneducated lay person so that lay person can spend years foisting unprofessional and legally indefensible planning off on a clueless citizenry, waste hundreds of thousands of dollars, and ruin the chances for Molalla to be competitive!
Molalla planning is the joke of state planning. How long does Molalla want to be laughed at by the rest of the state? How much further can things slip? Does the naive letter writer wish to see his investment in Molalla real estate slide further and further in value, while limited tax dollars go to pay for never ending bad planning?
Molalla is failing because its city manager is failing to confront this issue. Community groups would have zero ability to stop good planning. If community groups and citizens never said another word about HOW BAD AND WASTEFUL THE GROUND HOG DAY COMP PLAN IS, the Molalla plans would still be garbage. State and County oversight will always prevent LEGALLY INDEFENSIBLE COMP PLANS from being implemented.
If this Molalla citizen were truly concerned about moving Molalla forward he would immediately mobilize all Molalla citizens to demand that only trained professionals be hired for demanding, technical positions like Urban Planning. This citizen would also step up and questions why his tax dollars – all of our monies – are being squandered year after year after year on legally indefensible plans.
Citizen groups can’t stop GOOD planning – but thankfully in Oregon there are neutral oversight forces like DLCD and Clackamas County planning that won’t legally allow cities like Molalla to stick us with garbage sprawl plans.
All Molalla has to do to be successful is to produce legally defensible plans that conform to State and County Goals. It is that simple – good planning in, good endorsement from State and County, no legal challenges, and – SUCCESS!
A BAD COMP PLAN AND GARBAGE ELEMENTS THAT PROMOTE SPRAWL will always add up to FAILURE. And to date failure and a bankrupt planning department is all Molalla has to show for YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS OF WASTED TIME AND MONEY.
What kind of “manager” allows that kind of FAILURE to occur? What kind of manager takes home a big fat paycheck and doesn’t protect local citizens from worthless “planning” foisted off by a fake “planner” who collects his big fat paycheck based on nepotism?
That kind of BAD MANAGEMENT is why so many citizens hate the public sector. In the private sector that kind of unprofessional “help” would never have made it to the planning desk in the first place – and if a professional in the private sector can’t produce quick success that person would find himself in the unemployment line so fast it would make his head spin.
Is your boss paying you the big bucks for years of failure, bad decisions, and wasteful spending? Don’t you wish you were that lucky – or that connected?
For those folks who don’t like to read, here is the story of city “manger” Atkins and “plannin” Potter in a nutshell:
THE MORE THEY SPEND, THE LESS YOU GET!
Maybe they can paint THAT as the city motto on the front of city hall – maybe with a grant from YOUR TAX DOLLARS!
There is a cute story with a cute picture of a cute young woman who has been hired to “save” downtown Molalla in this week’s Pioneer.
That is not going to be a “cute” task – good luck to her!
Like the piles of DLCD letters with the “not going to get Molalla to where it wants or needs to be” message about “plannin”, I wish we could go back and get the huge stacks of stories over the years and years and years that tell about how this one, that one and TEAM are bullish on Molalla’s economy and the years and years of plans to “fix” downtown!
Good luck is all anyone not living on cloud nine can wish her – we all understand that we all need to get any job we can find. And, since her background includes land use, good luck times 100 on “working” with the plannin’ fools!
I just heard another great quote to paint on the front of City Hall:
MONEY FOR NOTHIN’!
That’s what the city leaders do – steal your money and produce:
NOTHING!
The hilarious quotes from city “government” – which is supposedly “supervised” by Atkins – just keep coming.
Today’s Pioneer quotes “lawyer” Chris Crean as saying that the comp plan meets state requirements.
Where have we heard that lie before?
Oh! We have heard it many times before from that same “I get paid no matter what “advice” I give” lawyer Crean as he collected big paychecks for “advice” that has to date always turned out to be totally wrong about the population figures!
My personal favorite is the pathetic Crean letter to Clackamas County last spring proposing yet another bogus legally indefensible “formula” made up by Crean.
Guess what? Crean claimed the EXACT SAME THING about Clackamas County, that they were wrong about population issues. And guess what! Crean was wrong and Clackamas County laughed his “proposal” off the block.
Who hires “help” like that – who keeps signing the big paychecks for “help” like that?
Oh! I know – John Atkins, the king of “I have no stake in the future of Molalla”, hires and signs the checks for marginal “help” like Crean and fake plannin’ dude Potter. Atkins gets his big paycheck each month – why should he care about the quality of “help” he pays for – he takes the checks and runs to live somewhere else.
Hey Atkins – how about writing a column in the Pioneer to tell us all about what a fantastic job Potter is doing! Tell us all about the wasted funds, the piles and piles of negative letters, and how state and county agency PROFESSIONALS wish they could run the other way when them there Mo-lalla plannin’ nightmares come a flyin’ into their offices for comments.
Boy, I sure am glad I don’t have to wake up with a degree in planning, drive to work at DLCD and have to try to write polite but negative comments back at Molalla over and over and over again: it would take some real talent not to pick up the phone and scream: STOP SENDING OUT IDIOT PROPOSALS, YOU FOOLS!
Hey “lawyer” Crean, how much will it COST the city to pay you for this round of bad advice? Hey citizens – how long can you afford to get ripped off paying for nonsense?
$200hr * forever